Ask Justin Frankel

justin = { main feed , music , code , askjf , pubkey };

Ask Justin Frankel
No reasonable question unanswered since 2009!

Suggested topics: programming, music, sleep, coffee, etc.

Note: please do not ask questions about REAPER features, bugs or scheduling, use the forums instead.

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[older questions]

Question: Have you ever peeked into open source DAWs like Ardour to figure out how to do something?
Asked by Will (23.125.224.x) on January 13 2025, 3:43pm
Reply on January 13 2025, 7:37pm:

I haven't, usually the hard part is not how to do XYZ, it's how to integrate XYZ intelligently into a massive amount of existing code. Comment...

Question: In REAPER's changelog, why bullet points are '+' and not the normal '-' ?
Asked by Abhi (106.219.69.x) on January 13 2025, 7:52am
Reply on January 13 2025, 7:38pm:

We use - internally for "updates relevant to the current pre-release only", though they get converted to # for the changelog. 1 Comment...

Question: Reaper 7.30: have you ever found money in the walls of a banana stand?
Asked by Lol 😆 (154.161.23.x) on January 12 2025, 10:04am
Reply on January 12 2025, 6:09pm:

I'm sure I will once I get a banana stand Comment...

Question: If anything, what do you regret most not having done differently in REAPER at some point because now it's hard to change/hinders development etc.?
Asked by wasereb4 (95.91.77.x) on January 12 2025, 1:11am
Reply on January 12 2025, 6:10pm:

hah too many things to pick one... the one I'm most dreading fixing at this moment is the notion that the realtime monitoring/FX/etc don't run while prebuffering the project for playback. That is something that should be simple to fix but there are a thousand places with assumptions that will be incorrect that will probably need to be fixed. there are dozens and dozens of things like that, I suppose Comment...

Question: Since you no longer "hoard" music, how are you consuming music these days? Spotify? Apple Music?
Asked by Will (23.125.224.x) on January 10 2025, 4:04pm
Reply on January 10 2025, 5:11pm:

I listen to and buy albums preferably via bandcamp. I have used Spotify to work through the catalog of a few bands, most recently The Cure, which has been fun, but I feel like with the amount I listen to the majority of the month's Spotify subscription didn't go where I would've wanted it to. I really wish there was a music service where if I pay them $X/mo, 80% goes to the artists who I listened to that month. That would be awesome. 1 Comment...

Question: why not limit free use of reaper to one year and lower the license fee to, say, us$30 ?
Asked by jason (90.38.146.x) on January 9 2025, 2:57pm
Reply on January 10 2025, 7:26am:

There's a point where it can be too cheap (and have not sufficient perceived value), or a trial period too long (purchasing a license becomes too optional). 60/60 is working well for us. 3 Comments...

Question: Just like there are some (or many?) music people, who keep hoarding plugins, plugins & plugins haha. Is there anything (not necessarily music related) you hoarded in your past or still hoard? 😂
Asked by Abhi (106.219.71.x) on January 8 2025, 9:12pm
Reply on January 8 2025, 11:36pm:

at one point music, though not so much anymore... I get rid of things regularly, though I do sometimes regret it, that is part of life I guess? Comment...

Question: whats your favorite evoo ?
Asked by kustin (170.203.213.x) on January 8 2025, 3:10am
Reply on January 8 2025, 11:36pm:

Shrug we mostly use Cobram Estate for cooking I think Comment...

Question: Have you ever considered making music the complete opposite way you've always made? Just to be open minded and see what's out there like maybe hoping to learn something new and get a different perspective on music and producing music. I went to university to learn Classical music with guitar and piano but after Uni, i also learned making music without using any traditional instruments and it was very very fascinating and educational.
Asked by Rano (113.21.66.x) on January 7 2025, 5:02pm
Reply on January 7 2025, 5:12pm:

it's fun trying different ways yeah, though the opposite way might be a little bit too far 1 Comment...

Question: Have you considered open-sourcing Reaper's code without accepting MR? I listened to an interview you did with Paul Davis of Ardour in which you mentioned that you were not interested in the tasks of an open source maintainer (reviewing people's code, dealing with people's expectations), which I can understand. But Reaper is a very powerful DAW and I think the code would be helpful to a lot of people.
Asked by Maxi (213.168.121.x) on January 7 2025, 4:21pm
Reply on January 7 2025, 5:11pm:

It would get messy with forked versions around and the support implications etc Comment...

Question: Why did Applied Graphine Materials Fail ?
Asked by Tom Frost (51.219.210.x) on January 7 2025, 3:28pm
Reply on January 7 2025, 5:11pm:

still no idea

Comment...

Question: do you have many side projects besides reaper, not restricted to coding
Asked by TheGod (186.210.88.x) on January 7 2025, 6:17am
Reply on January 7 2025, 6:23am:

music projects, running, occasional bit of minor woodworking, kayaking, probably other things I'm forgetting about too Comment...

Question: Hey Justin, for my gui-library I need to prevent Retina-upscaling since I have my own scaling-engine. How do I turn off Retina on Retina computers? gfx.ext_retina=0?
Asked by Mespotine (176.6.145.x) on January 6 2025, 9:42pm
Reply on January 7 2025, 3:46am:

gfx.ext_retina=1 on initialization. then, from that point on, you'd want to render with your own scaling, using gfx.ext_retina as the scalefactor. e.g. if it is 2.0, you should use fonts that are double the size, etc. does that make sense? and additionally, on Windows/linux, it will get set with the effective scaling. 8 Comments...

Question: VST3 vs CLAP, which is future?
Asked by Abhi (106.219.71.x) on January 6 2025, 7:53pm
Reply on January 7 2025, 3:46am:

Both probably. 1 Comment...

Question: What is secret of your intelligence? 🥹
Asked by Dude (106.219.71.x) on January 6 2025, 5:25am
Reply on January 6 2025, 5:03pm (edited at January 6 2025, 5:07pm):

There is probably an optimal and nonzero amount of self-uncertainty/doubt to have. Comment...

Question: Hi, how should Reaper extract multiple audio tracks from a video? Sometimes there are many audio tracks in one video. I've tried various ways of file conversion and rendering.
Asked by nico (112.254.92.x) on January 2 2025, 5:22am
Reply on January 2 2025, 3:36pm:

easiest thing is probably to reprocess the videos with just the audio track you want using ffmpeg 2 Comments...

Question: What was your 2024 resolution, and did you achieve it?
Asked by Will (23.125.224.x) on December 31 2024, 4:38pm
Reply on December 31 2024, 4:55pm:

I can't remember if I had one hah 2 Comments...

Question: when hosting vst3 plugins, how to convert param id to index?
Asked by Ruchira (175.157.14.x) on December 31 2024, 3:24pm
Reply on December 31 2024, 4:55pm:

We build a map of parameters by enumerating all of them by index. 2 Comments...

Question: hey justin, what ui library are you using for reaper? if it's a custom one written by yourself, any plans to opensource it?
Asked by not jf (57.128.213.x) on December 31 2024, 1:44pm
Reply on December 31 2024, 4:56pm:

Much of it is rendered by WDL/lice and WDL/wingui, but the WALTER layout stuff is all closed-source (it would take quite a bit of work to make it reusable) Comment...

Question: Do you like animation? There's the Arcane series and Dandadan on netflix which have incredible art direction and vision, even though animation could be considered ¨childish¨ I think it's an incredible limitless medium to tell stories and perspectives.
Asked by Justin 2 (187.191.8.x) on December 30 2024, 11:04pm
Reply on December 31 2024, 4:57pm:

Not a huge fan of animation but sometimes it can be nice, I've heard of Arcane before, maybe eventually will get around to it. Comment...

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